SC22 I18N-RG N1109
Canadian
contribution based on the ISO/JTC1/SC22/I18NRG March 2005 agenda
Date: 2005-03-03
Status: Result of
a Canadian brainstorming held on 2005-03-01
Editorial conventions in this document: agenda item identified in bold type, Canadian answer in normal type
Result of Canadian
brainstorming on the agenda proposed by I18NRG, Mr. John Benito
[
I18n APIs mandated by SC22 2001 Plenary? Does SC22 need common specifications?
6.2 Maintenance of WG20 generated Standards.
[
Competing with CLDR (Common Locale Data
Repository)
Hottest topic: try to converge on a standard which
would be a merge of both. Deals with things of the past.
Developed
initially by SC22, recently transferred to SC2 (but still usable by SC22 PLs, and perhaps already referenced, like in COBOL):
6.3 Identify any
new I18N projects.
[
6.4 Management of
non-project activities related to I18N.
[
(Added
agenda item 6.5) How to
cooperate with others inside and outside SC22? (key: no work
duplication).
Strong Canadian
position: i18n is an important part of SC22.
What is
required in SC22? How do we reorganize?
Have to
send all this at a higher level: JTC1 has not articulated a roadmap for i18n.
The rapporteur group could step in in doing that. What belongs to SC22, what does not belong.
What are
the problems faced by programming languages?
Identifiers,
things related to portable naming of objects, case folding and conversion,
operating systems handling of i18n, portable locales, personalization, mapping
of character sets, sorting, interoperability between systems (highly dependent
on i18n), cataloguing, file systems, comments in any script, literals in any
script.
On one
hand, WG20 was perceived as POSIX-centered (by opposition to OO and Java), the opponents were perceived as too
Unicode-consortium-controlled.
3 ways to
reorganize:
Make it a
mandate of Plenaries all the time (visibility but
responsibility will be lost)
Create a
new WG (visibility)
Create some
kind of special working group managed more closely by SC22 than WG20 (has to be
reconfirmed at each meeting)
Canadian
recommendation: Re-creation of a WG, but co-location with SC22 Plenaries to manage it more closely. There are obvious
horizontal relationships (with Linux [for example] and with traditional WGs).
However,
this WG should be created when SC22 has understood clearly what i18n means for
the Programming Language Standards developers and once it has identified
specific topics of interest. Finally it goes without saying that a sufficient number
of national bodies have to be identified prior to any NP ballot that would be
preliminary to the creation of a WG.